lives …’
I sense him squirming at the end of the phone.
‘I don’t understand what you mean, I’m working …’
‘I have to go,’ I say, and hang up.
I stare at the cobbles beneath my feet. Snapping myself out of my trance I reach forwards for the handle of the theatre’s back door, but as I do I notice a piece of paper, a leaflet, is stuck to the bottom of my shoe where my heel has pierced it. I have been walking with it pinned to me all this time, like a cheap joke. I lean against the wall, trying to keep my balance as I lift my foot in the air, and snatch the leaflet off. It’s an underground map.
On the front, in big red letters, it says,
‘Don’t waste time.’
You know those days just before Christmas when there are lights everywhere, in Highgate village or anywhere in London? I don’t mean the orange and red neon glory lights of Oxford Street or Regent Street, with their torrents of swarming shoppers below who fill every spare inch of pavement, as those lights, unlike puppies, are just for Christmas, and not for life. I am talking about the branches of white lights that string across the high streets of villages, dusting the everyday with Christmas sparkle, enough to remind you that it’s supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. Some of those dotted lights even shine out from people’s windows, the optimistic ones. I think they should leave those lights up forever, for every day of the year. I’d like a life like that. Those strings of cheap diamonds are like a shared and hopeful smile. They punctuate the functional with magic, and increasingly that’s what I feel slipping away. My magic reserves are depleted, like dwindling natural resources, and they need a little topping up. I need a world with a little more magic.
Rain spits at the tips of my shoes sticking out in to the alley, as I loiter inside the backdoor of The Majestic, leaning against a grubby wall. I could call Ben back. My phone sits in my hand like a grenade. I always call him back. Ben can leave cross words for hours, for days. It’s like he wears blinkers or has tunnel vision. I know that men and women think differently but Ben is like a computer.
The Ben that I recognise now is his reflection in a monitor, on his PC screen: he is mostly otherwise engaged with technology. I check his phone constantly. I hate myself for doing it – I know it makes me a cliché. The act of rifling surreptitiously through his texts when he isn’t in the room, while nervously listening for the sound of his feet padding down the hallway to signal his return, epitomises the change from ‘old confident me’ to ‘fresh and pathetic me’ like an exclamation mark. But I have found texts from her. They always end with a kiss. I sat outside her office for an hour once, crying. She organises events for banks. Ben never fails to remind me, subtly or otherwise, that it was he and Katie that were hurt by their break-up, as if they are an exclusive club with a restricted membership of two.
Katie. I have to whisper it, like a swear word in a nursery. Apparently my feelings at the time paled in comparison to how badly they both felt, even given his constant emotional yo-yoing back and forth, from me to her to me to her. Ben doesn’t think it was painful for me, as I tried desperately to begin a proper and exclusive relationship with him, this man that I had fallen in love with, as he sat and cried for somebody else, and I hugged him to try to make it better. They are friends again now, but I’ll never be Katie’s ‘favourite person’ apparently. Ben finds it easier to blame me for the breakdown of his relationship rather than the two people who were actually in it, and in a way I let him. I do feel guilty about her. I feel like being obsessed with her gives me a reason to stay with Ben. Leaving him now would be like kicking her in the teeth again, this woman I’ve never met. A part of me believes that Ben would like me to leave, so that he can go back to her and settle back into his old-man chair in his old-man relationship and just call me a ‘phase’. He can pretend that he didn’t want anything else, just for a little while.
Ben ‘catches up’ with Katie once a month, either on the phone or in person. When I tried to say that I thought that once a month might be a little excessive, he told me I couldn’t tell him what to do. I tried to explain that I wasn’t telling him what to do, but rather letting him know how his actions made me feel, and he told me, with irritation in his voice and a hateful exhausted look on his face, that I had to get used to it because it was going to happen whether I liked it or not.
I think that Ben would prefer life to escape him rather than acknowledge that he is terrified of getting in touch with his emotions, but I don’t want that. Happiness isn’t fear. Fear leads to hate, and hate leads to the dark side … I know because Ben and his mate Iggy watch Star Wars constantly – the DVD Special Edition, the Director’s Cut Four Disc DVD, the Special Director’s Cut Ten Disc Super Edition. Cue Darth Vader heavy breathing. But I’m not ready for the dark side. I can still feel the force, even if Ben can’t. And I’ve always been afraid of the dark …
I suppose I should acknowledge that Ben thinks he’s just fine. ‘Men don’t talk,’ he says, like that’s reason enough for us not to sort things out, not to be happy.
I throw my phone into my bag in despair. My head is hot but the rain cools the air around me as I feel my face crack and crumble like an earthquake in a desert, my make-up disintegrating as I start to cry.
I startle myself with a short sharp laugh of surprise.
Then I cry again.
The prospect of leaving Ben makes me shake. I cannot contemplate being without him, of how scared I am of being alone no matter how cowardly it makes me feel … I desperately grab in my bag for my phone again, as if I am suddenly on a ten-second deadline and if I don’t speak to him before the timer runs out our relationship will explode. I find it and claw it open, and hit his number.
I just need to hear his voice. I need us to say important things that cement our feelings for each other somehow, so that I can get through the day. Ben and I don’t discuss marriage or kids, because I don’t want to put too much pressure on him. But, then, I am thirty-one now and I want those things, and maybe he does too. Lots of other people do, so why not us, and why am I so scared to say it? I don’t have to goad him into loving me and then, and only when he tells me he is ready, will we be allowed to admit that we want babies. I am not going to be scared to say that I want to have children anymore! Maybe if I just say it then he will too …
It rings five times before he answers and I immediately say, ‘Ben, it’s me.’
‘I’m working …’
‘I want to have children.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I want you to know that I want to have children.’
‘Right …’
‘And?’
‘And what? I’m working …’
‘I am telling you that I want to have children.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose you do …’
‘Well what do you think?’
‘About what?’
‘About having children?’
‘I think I want to have them too …’
He sounds like he is searching desperately for the right answer on some quiz show, like Blockbusters: ‘I’ll have whatever will make her stop talking please, Bob?’
‘Soon?’ I ask. ‘Do you want to have them soon?’
‘I … I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.’
‘Well … what do you think about?’
‘What? I’m working.’
‘Yes,